An ill wind 30 years ago whipped up a business opportunity | PHOTOS

Randy's Tree Service born of necessity after massive winds of 1982

Courier & Press Archives
Two young boys examine a tree that was uprooted in Park Lawn Cemetery during the storm on June 8, 1982.

EVANSVILLE - Randy Nicely of McCutchanville, Ind., was at work in a grocery store 30 years ago today when ominous darkness, a wall of clouds and vicious, hurricane-force winds descended upon the Tri-State.

June 8, 1982, was a day his life's trajectory changed, but it wasn't due to injury, property damage, power outages or some other storm-related challenge.

It changed because of downed trees — hundreds upon hundreds of them — left in the storm's wake. Collectively, they created an astonishing mess that somebody had to clean up.

For Nicely and his across-the-street neighbor on Madison Avenue, Stan Kerley, the storm created an opening in the local marketplace.

"Stan said, 'Hey Randy, you've got a chain saw, and I've got a chain saw,'" recalls Nicely. "'We've both got pickup trucks. Why don't we make some extra money on the side cleaning up people's yards?' There was so much stuff in the yards. That's basically what launched the business."

What eventually came to be known as Randy's Tree Service, an Evansville-based operation that today employs eight workers, was born.

Damage was everywhere

The gales of June 8, 1982, which topped 75 miles per hour, brought widespread power, telephone and cable interruptions, extensive property damage, and more than 60 injuries.

At Skylane Airport on Evansville's North Side, about a dozen planes — several of them flipped over — were damaged by the winds. Willard Library, already in need of renovation work at the time, sustained some $100,000 in damage, as did the Audubon Raceway annex building in Henderson, Ky.

Cemeteries and crops were ravaged. Street signs and billboards were felled. WIKY radio was knocked off the air as winds mangled its tower. Five panels of Bosse Field's center-field fence were toppled, and the historic ballpark also lost power. The Evansville Triplets' scheduled game against Oklahoma City was postponed.

And everywhere you looked, an astounding number of trees were down.

"If people lived on the East Side or in Newburgh and they had to go to Downtown Evansville to work, every main thoroughfare — Washington, Bellemeade, Lincoln, Walnut — had trees across the street," Nicely recalls. "It was days before the city could get those cleaned up. People would try to drive to work, and they'd have to zigzag through the streets so they could get to where they were going.

"There were just trees everywhere — whole trees laying across Washington Avenue. Every other block had trees across it."

Help from prisoners

Garvin Park was particularly hard-hit. It lost more than 120 trees that were more than 100 years old. "Garvin is in terrible, terrible shape — the worst I've ever seen anywhere," then-Parks Board President Jack Corn Jr. told The Evansville Courier in a story published June 9, 1982. "We've lost an almost uncountable number of trees, many ripped right out at the roots."

Gov. Robert Orr, who toured Evansville two days after the storm, sent equipment and 60 work-release inmates to cut wood and haul off debris.

Nicely and Kerley, meanwhile, were finding there was more than enough to do on Evansville's East Side. Both men continued their full-time jobs, with Nicely able to cut his work day short for a while after the storm so he could continue his cleanup efforts.

For weeks after the storm, Nicely recalls, he'd work at the store from 5 a.m. until noon, then he'd be outside until dark.

"We started off word-of-mouth," Nicely said. "After a couple of weeks we had some business cards made up that said 'Reasonable Rate Tree Service.'

"We'd clear people's driveways, and we'd also get the debris off their roofs so they could get tarps on them," he remembers. "At that time, we didn't have a whole lot of equipment. All we had was a couple of pickup trucks, so we didn't do any major big stuff. But it was busy."

An accidental business

Meanwhile, new work — prunings, trimmings and removals that weren't related to the storm — began to come their way. For the two men, life largely consisted of eating, sleeping and working. After two years, Kerley decided it was time to move on.

Nicely, however, pushed forward and within another year had purchased a chipper, a chipper truck and added a few hired hands. It took another three years, but he finally left the grocery store for good and made his new business a permanent, full-time endeavor.

"It kind of grew on me," he explains. "Not that I'm that big now, but I never wanted to get as big as what I am now. I just woke up one day and thought, 'Man, what's happened here?' It all just happened."

Nicely says he'd like to retire, but he's found it hard to walk away. He still maintains a solid customer base, and business is good.

In addition, Randy's Tree Service is today a family affair: Nicely is in business with his son Ryan, a 2003 Purdue graduate with a bachelor's degree in forestry.

Nicely says there are, indeed, numerous trials and tribulations associated with keeping his broad client base satisfied. At the same time, however, he recognizes that the furious winds of June 8, 1982, blew in a new way of life.

"I'm sure if I'd stayed in the grocery-store business that I'd probably have a lot less gray hair right now than what I have," he says. "I'm sure I'd have a lot less stress and all that … But I wouldn't necessarily live where I live and have what I have. It's been a long road."